Category Archives: Sculpture

In this post I’ll look at some of the ideas raised by ‘Broke Chair’, in Geneva. Public art is a fascinating area to consider, it prompts so many thoughts about audience, purpose, function, even material, and so on. I may well follow this up with other essays on public artworks, so if this is something that appeals to you, let me know in the comments, and keep an eye out!

This artwork raises questions about the ‘function’ of art, particularly public art, and especially non-narrative art. This was, unlike most sculptures, created for a very specific and active purpose: to remind those at the UN of the horrendous impact of land mines and cluster bombs in the run up to the signing of two significant agreements, the Otaowa Treaty in 1997 and the Oslo Treaty in 2008. It was first installed in 1997, and reinstalled in 2007. Originally commissioned by Paul Vermeulen, co-founder of Handicap International Suisse. It reaches 12 metres high, and is made from 5.5 tonnes of wood. Artist Daniel Berset created the idea, while it was constructed by carpenter Louis Geneve. It is bolted to the ground, and it is clear to see how it is made from numerous pieces of wood. It serves an essentially commemorative purpose, the torn leg an allegory for the physical destruction these horrific devices cause. One could compare it to the Cenotaph in London. Though it does not commemorate a specific conflict, but rather the victims of global conflicts, it acts a warming to future generations: ‘do not let this happen again’, in a similar way. However, the abstract form the work takes goes some way towards obscuring this reasoning. It has, predictably and understandable, become one of ‘the sights’ on the Geneva tourist trail. It has become a fun photo-opportunity for the selfie-driven masses. Much like the ‘leaning tower of Pisa’, it has become the focus of fun and cutesy, optical illusion shots, people raising their hands to complete the broken leg, or simply demonstrate its great size by their failure to do so. This is quite understandable, it is a fun thing to do, and the resulting photos are a silly memento of the trip, the more serious photos being saved for poses in front of the UN flags. But one can’t help but consider whether the work is achieving its awareness-raising function. An advantage that works like the Cenotaph has is that they are extremely simple to understand – war memorials depicting tombs, brave and injured soldiers, and so on, clearly demand a sombre tone, and one can’t help but consider the issues they depict. By contrast, the Broken Chair, while having the advantage of being a striking a simple image, demands an imaginative leap (and indeed some prior knowledge) on the part of the viewer.

This leads one on to a question of audience. Who is the audience for this work? Who is supposed to understand it? Maybe the woman taking photos of her two dogs in front of the work isn’t really the target viewer. The physical context of the piece is carefully chosen, it stares down the alley of flags, in an almost intimidating fashion. It holds these collected nations to account; taller than the flags it faces, it represents the universality of the issue, of the threat. It is greater than any one nation, than, indeed, the idea of nationhood. It speaks to the universal important of recognising the shared humanity of the world’s inhabitants. Angrily looking down upon those small, insignificant individuals who will nevertheless make world-changing decisions in the UN, it is raised to a higher purpose. So perhaps it does not matter that tourist and locals alike have embraced it as a source of humour and pleasure; in taking on one role, it has not necessarily abandoned the other.

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One of the things people assume about you when they learn that you’re an art historian (and one of the things that we jokingly say about ourselves!) is that we make brilliant dinner party conversation. People will throw out their favourite artists (or simply the last one they heard of), and assume that we’re not only familiar with their entire output, but have an insightful and fully-formed opinion on them. But one of the exciting things about art history, whether you choose to officially study it, or simply indulge a passion for it, is discovering new works of art, artists, and even entire movements you’ve never before encountered. But this can be a slightly intimidating experience. It can be difficult to figure your way into a work that feels unfamiliar. There are however a few things that you can look out for to help you find your way into a new work of art which I’ll be exploring in this new series. These suggestions are in no way proscriptive, it’s important that you embrace your own response to the work, but if you’re ever stuck when looking at a new work, these tips might be worth bearing in mind.

Material

The artist’s choice of medium can make a huge difference to the overall effect of the artwork. Often museum labels will help you with this, but it satisfying to be able to identify the materials yourself. Some are really easy to identify, with oil or watercolours perhaps, but this can sometimes be difficult; often the material of sculpture can be hard to pinpoint. But with a little practice you start to gain a familiarity with the materials, and build up a knowledge of what they look like and how they’re used.

Once you have an idea of what the material is, it’s worth thinking about the qualities and constraints of that material. The development of oil painting allowed artists in the Northern Renaissance to create amazingly realistic images, using are fully layered pigments and glazes to bring a vitality to their works unmatched by the frescoes of their Southern cousins. It is thought that these new paints were created in part in response to the damp climate of the North, which made the plaster-based techniques of Italian artists implausible. Centuries later, the vivid colours of the Impressionists were made possible by the development of new, chemical pigments. The bright yellows and blues seen in so many of their works was made possible by these new pigments. Their en plain air techniques were also made possible by the invention of tubes of paint, making the materials far more portable.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pont Neuf, 1872

Sculpture is perhaps even more dependent on its materials. The physical qualities are of key importance, having a fundamental effect on what one would be able to sculpt. The poor tensile strength of marble is the reason why so many sculptures are supported by ugly props, with bars of the material holding up their arms or legs. This is why so many Greek gods are leaning against a conveniently positioned tree trunk. The opposite quality enables the fantastical creations of the sixteenth century, such as Giambologna’s Mercury (which positively flaunts the tensile strength of bronze with its outstretched limbs.

Giambologna, Mercury, 1580

The sculpture’s material isn’t just of interest form the point of view of its physical qualities. Many materials also take on a symbolic quality, or accrue connotations that can impact on the meaning of the finished work. In his seminal work The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany, Michael Baxandall explored the way in which cultural associations about limewood came to be attached to the sculptures that were carved from it. The special, pseudo-magical qualities that folklore attached to the tree itself impacted on how the sculptures were understood by contemporary viewers. This book also contains Baxandall’s examination of the different woods on a cellular level, and the implications of this for the forms it was sculpted into. Far later, modern sculptors such as Henry Moore would lead the ‘truth to materials’ movement, which sought to exploit the inherent qualities of the material to create sculpted forms that somehow reflected the nature of the material itself.

In painting too, materials could gain their own symbolic meanings. The most famous example of this is the use of lapis lazuli in depictions of the Virgin Mary. The high cost of the pigment, due to it being imported all the way from Afghanistan, where it still only occurred in relatively small quantities, meant that it came to be seen as appropriate for depicting this holy figure.

The price of the material is thus also worth considering. While it is obviously often the case that materials are chosen for their expense, they can also be deliberately inexpensive. For instance, Russian Constructivist artists such as Alexander Rodchenko chose cheap, readily available materials such as plywood, in a deliberate attempt to make their art more accessible, and to strip it of the bourgeois connotations of more conventional materials. In other cases, the material may be chosen specifically for such connotations. Mark Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant, created for the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square, made use of Carrara marble (Michelangelo’s David was able made from Carrara marble), placing it in a tradition of nude sculptures dating back through the Renaissance to Roman art, which in turn imitated Greek art. By using this material Quinn makes a bold and positive claim for the beauty and importance of his subject, and forces his viewers to reconsider the negative effects of the bland uniformity of sculpture in the Classical tradition. Quinn himself commented on his choice of material, ‘Marble is the material used to commemorate heroes, and these people seem to me to be a new kind of hero – people who instead of conquering the outside world have conquered their own inner world and gone on to live fulfilled lives. To me, they celebrate the diversity of humanity. Most monuments are commemorating past events; because Alison is pregnant it’s a sculpture about the future possibilities of humanity’.

So there are lots of aspects to the choice of material in artworks. These certainly shouldn’t be treated as a tick-list of things to go through, but thinking about material in this way can offer a new perspective on a work of art, and can be an interesting approach to take when you find yourself in front of a brand new (to you, or the world) work of art.

This seminal work by Rodchenko (1891-1956) is a key example of the Constructivist Movement. Dating from 1920, the sculpture is a demonstration of the ways in which artists such as Rodchenko sought to make themselves ‘useful’ in a post-Revolutionary Society. The birth of Soviet Russia brought about fundamental shifts in attitudes towards culture. There was a strong inclination to see both art and artists as part of the bourgeois society that the 1917 Revolution had swept aside. With works like this, Rodchenko and others took up the task of justifying their existence in the new society that they had played a part in bringing about.

Alexander Rodchenko, 1935

A major part of this was to try and establish art as relating to some sort of practical purpose. Artists had to be useful members of society, no longer the peddlers of decorative fluff, but workers, with a role to play in perfecting the new nation. The choice of material for this sculpture can be characterised as almost ‘anti-art’, rather than being made of exclusive and expensive traditional materials, bronze or marble say, it is made from plywood, which was cheap and readily available. This sense of democratisation is carried through to the crafting of the object – it is deliberately simplified, and straightforward. The process of creation has been demystified, so that any viewer might be able to understand how the sculpture has been put together. Constructivist art was supposed to be educational, and we see this reflected in the methods of construction. This piece of sculpture actually went on tour, but not, as one might expect, to museums or galleries, but to factories, and other centres of industrial production, where it was used as an example of different ways of construction. To this end, the sculpture is designed so that it can be folded flat in on itself, making it highly portable, something that would have been particularly necessary given the relatively flimsy materials it is made from.

Overall the sculpture thus gives a sense of bringing an egalitarian air to art. Moving away from both the ‘decorative’ bourgeois art of pre-Revolution, and the more obscure ideas of many early twentieth century avant-garde movements, it expresses a sense of purpose and clarity. Though one might argue that something is lost by this desire to demystify, to simplify, the sculpture, and its creator, seem to work with the idea that knowledge should not be hidden, but instead shared freely with all: the Communist approach expressed in art. It is new art, for a new society.